Broadband News

Three quarters of Cumbria has access to fibre based broadband

One major problem for the county led BDUK projects has been that the
Internet is such an in demand adjunct to modern life that the roll-outs cannot
happen fast enough, so while Cumbria is celebrating passing the 75% with access to fibre milestone, those
who are still waiting on the phase 1 or phase 2 roll-outs will be sure to be
very vocal in their displeasure at having to wait.

"Connecting Cumbria has now given an additional 90,000 homes and businesses
across the county access to this digital technology. Fibre broadband has the
power to transform lives and the economy and, of course, it is essential people
know how to get it and understand the benefits it can bring. This series of
workshops, each attended by up to 80 people, is showing people and businesses
how they can be part of the digital revolution and a new connected
community."

Kieran Charleson, BT's Regional Partnership Director for the North
West

The release makes the bold claim that two thirds of those with access to a
fibre based service through the Connecting Cumbria project are seeing average
speeds of 50 Mbps or faster - which apparently exceeds the agreed targets at
the start of the project. Of course as we know people will doubt any BT
figures, we have ran our numbers and arrive at a figure of 55% of those in
Cumbria with access to a fibre based connection getting faster than 50 Mbps,
our estimate is for all cabinets in the Cumbria not just the project ones and
assumes a high level of crosstalk (crosstalk is interference that can increase
as more people take-up VDSL2, and should be mitigated once Vectoring is rolled
out and we will adjust our sums once this is live across the UK). Some may say
the 11% difference suggests BT are wrong, but it only requires a minimal change
in the assumptions over crosstalk impact to bridge this gap - we prefer to
stick with a worst case scenario for now.

Our own coverage
tracking showed the county breaking the 75% fibre based target back at the
start of July and with the latest figures from 21st July below we can see the
pace of change with each 1% change on the county meaning roughly another 2,500
to 3,000 premises are benefiting.

thinkbroadband calculation of Superfast Broadband Coverage in
Cumbria and its constituencies - updated 1st July
2015

Area

% fibre based

% superfast
24 Mbps or faster

% superfast
30 Mbps or faster(change since 2nd July)

% cable

% Openreach FTTP

% Under 2 Mbps USC

% Under 15 Mbps

Cumbria County

77.8%

73.6%

72.8% (+1.5)

0.4%

0%

1%

22.2%

Barrow and Furness

92.8%

88.8%

87.9% (+0.1)

0%

0%

0.7%

9.8%

Carlisle

93%

90%

89.3% (+0.4)

2.1% (*)

0%

1.2%

7.6%

Copeland

71.4%

68.4%

67.8% (+1)

0%

0%

0.9%

25.6%

Penrith and The Border

54.3%

48.5%

47.4% (+2.2)

0.2%

0%

1.8%

46.8%

Westmorland and Lonsdale

73%

67.3%

65.9% (+1.7)

0%

0%

0.7%

26.4%

Workington

79.5%

75.8%

74.9% (+3.7)

0%

0.1%

1.1%

19.4%

* - the cable presence in Carlisle has changed as we've now mapped
the SmallWorld network that is now owned by Virgin Media.

Workington constituency has a small amount of FTTP but this does not
feature when you show the county result to just 1 decimal place.

Workington looks to be the area with the most progress and this follows a
pattern across the UK where work tends to be concentrated in an area for a
while and then the focus shifts.

In summary good news for Cumbria but as always there is more work to be done
and the questions now will be about what will happen to the final 5% who are
outside the scope of the phase 1 and phase 2 projects.

Comments

Where can we find out which premises are in phase 1 and 2?

ukwiz

over 2 years ago

For those Cumbrians unlikely to get superfast broadband, hearing reports that speeds are faster than expected is just rubbing our faces in the mire. My enquiry as to the possibility of SFB now that Phase 2 has been let to BT was “try satellite”. I live less than a mile from 3 separate telephone exchanges & the main west coast highway but I’m surrounded by woodland impenetrable to satellite signals. Many rural Cumbrian households will face similar geographical challenges to receiving satellite and/or wireless provision the decision makers need to understand that Cumbria isn't a flat county.